We loved The Kitchn when it was a mere twinkle in Apartment Therapy’s eye, so we were delighted to see Emma’s post about Cookthink on Friday. Thanks for the love, Kitchn, and for really helpful posts like this one about which foods you can carry on the plane. We’re flying south tomorrow–our first trip since Angus has learned to crawl and snatch–so the food we take also needs to have very few moving parts. Suggestions?

This summer, Cookthink’s been really lucky to have two excellent interns from Smith College. Corinne and Sam have been busy researching, entering and (mostly) analyzing recipes for us to publish on Cookthink. We’ll post a proper introduction soon, but I wanted to mention one exciting side effect of having them come a couple of times a week. (more…)

We’re going out of town on Tuesday and have begun the pre-vacation fridge purge. This morning, I unearthed a jar of sambal oelek from the back. There were a few tablespoons left, enough to cover some bone-in chicken breasts with a thin layer of marinade. I’m hoping I’ll be able to grill them, but if the humidity finally breaks into rain, I’ll turn the oven way up, pull up a chair with a Festina Peche and just sweat it out.

Recipe: Sambal-Roasted Turkey Breast (Cookthink)
Reference: What is sambal? (Cookthink)

My last few Daring Bakers challenge posts have been tales of woe—crushed cakes, broken batards, etc. But I am happy to report that this most recent challenge, one of my first forays into pastry, went exceptionally well!

The Danish Braid recipe from Sherry Yard’s The Secrets of Baking, chosen by Kelly of Sass & Veracity and Ben of What’s Cookin’? was a laminated yeast pastry, meaning that it had yeast and needed to rise, but also that it has alternating layers—in this case, of dough and lots and lots of butter.
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Used to be that skirt steak was regarded as a second-rate cut of beef, good only when you couldn’t afford the good stuff. But fajita madness changed that and home cooks everywhere got hip to the wonders of this long flat cut of beef.

Not sure what to do with skirt steak? Steamy Kitchen’s grilled skirt steak is a great place to start, maybe with some caramelized shallots or in tacos with radishes, romaine, cotija and lime.

For a Quebecois specialty, try this Montreal steak sandwich. The recipe came to us from ketherian Food Journal and was the winner of this week’s Root Source Challenge. Congratulations Rebecca!

For next week’s Root Source Challenge: don’t forget to send in your watermelon recipes by noon on Tuesday.

That was fast. Two weeks after TasteSpotting suddenly closed down, the site is back up.

About an hour ago, Sarah of The Delicious Life announced on Twitter: “if you know about my top secret retro alpha project, it’s ready for you to test…” Twenty minutes later, Sunday Nite Dinner’s Chuck, the creator of the really smooth TasteSpotting clone Food Gawker, replied on Twitter: “Congrats on your ‘top secret retro alpha project!’” Sarah then replied: “LOL! thank you! though…. congrats to both of us, right? ”

Has TasteSpotting’s two-week absence made it irrelevant now that most of the TasteSpotting fan base has moved over to Food Gawker? Or was Food Gawker just a quick fix while TasteSpotting was down? Is the world big enough for two of them? Will they merge? If not, is it improper to submit the same image and link to both of them? Am I spending too much time on Twitter?

After a week of researching grills in the early spring, I finally decided on the Big Green Egg. Many of you have asked me how it’s going. After a couple of months of heavy use, I can now report that I have not been disappointed. (more…)

Chip’s post earlier this week, along with a summer-induced craving for room-temperature or chilled dishes, had me thinking about pasta salad. Yesterday for lunch, with Sara Dickerman’s pasta salad manifesto in mind, I decided to come up with a pasta salad I had never made before.

I knew I wanted an olive-oil and lemon juice based pasta salad, and I had a big bag of arugula from the Dupont Circle farmers market I needed to use. Starting with those ingredients, I could have gone with any number of combinations of meats, cheeses and herbs. I decided to go classic Italian and chose fresh mozzarella, ham and basil.

I dropped half a pound of whole wheat ricciole (which are like big, curved, ridged elbow macaroni) into a pot of boiling salted water. (I took a moment to be glad that this was the only pot I’d need for this meal.) Meanwhile, I cubed a half pound each of fresh mozzarella and uncured ham. I put the arugula, ham and mozzarella in a big bowl while the pasta cooked.

I drained the pasta a couple of minutes before I normally would have for a hot pasta dish; the pasta would keep cooking as I let it cool down in the colander. After about 5 minutes the pasta was just warm. I added it to the bowl with the other ingredients, poured in 4 tablespoons of olive oil, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, a light sprinkling of salt and a lot of coarsely ground black pepper.

I tossed everything together along with a handful of torn basil leaves. Though I found myself wishing I had cut the ham and mozzarella into smaller cubes, it turned out really well. And as Dickerman noted, it was even better after a few hours in the fridge.

I’m contemplating another pasta salad based on this classic combination: smoked salmon, hard-boiled eggs, red onion and capers.

Other combinations I should try?

Claire’s getting her wisdom teeth pulled today and is going to be gumming gauze for a couple of days. We don’t (yet) have a “post-oral surgery” mood tag on Cookthink, and anyway, what you crave after something like that is less a matter of what you want and more a matter of what you can stand. After I had my wisdom teeth pulled, I lived for a couple of days on milkshakes, my mom’s pot roast and meatballs from the Italian place next to my apartment in Santa Monica.

Anybody remember what tasted/felt good after wisdom teeth surgery?

Recipe: Avocado-Coconut Milk Shake (hogwash)
Recipe: Blueberry Smoothie (Karina’s Kitchen)

TasteSpotting went away and now it’s coming back. In case you haven’t heard, TasteSpotting has a new owner. There’s no small amount of speculation about the new owner’s identity (most of it in my head). In the meantime, Jean Aw, the soon-to-be-former editor of TasteSpotting, has started a similar drinks-only venture called Liqurious.